Safety concerns 'not adequately dealt with'
March 12th 2009 A worker at the Grovepark Mills plastics plant says his concerns about health and safety were not adequately dealt with by the Health and Safety Executive in the two years before an explosion in 2004 which killed nine workers, new research claims.
The study presents testimony by Laurence Connelly, a former worker of 15 years’ service at the ICL Plastics Ltd plant, who complained to the HSE about chemical fumes and lack of protective gear in 2002.
In the study, published in Work, Employment and Society, an official journal of the British Sociological Association published by SAGE, Mr Connelly describes how the HSE failed to respond promptly to his concerns and identified him as a whistleblower in front of the plant’s managers during a visit.
The explosion, which killed nine and injured 40, was caused by corroded gas pipes. ICL Plastics Ltd and an associate company ICL Tech Ltd were each fined £200,000 at the High Court at Glasgow, having pleaded guilty to breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Mr Connelly’s account does not deal directly with the faulty gas pipes that caused the explosion. Instead he tells of his personal experience of health and safety failures.
The study, written by Mr Connelly and his co-author, Professor Philip Taylor of the University of Strathclyde, suggests that the Health and Safety Executive failed to tackle these other issues properly.
“The testimony suggests broader regulatory weakness, principally on the part of the HSE,” say the authors. “Laurence then recalls the HSE’s failure to have responded promptly and effectively to his profound concerns regarding health and safety practices two years before the disaster.”
The study, entitled ‘Before the disaster: health, safety and working conditions at a plastics factory’, says that weaknesses with the HSE’s approach may be exacerbated by” budget cuts and resource constraints”. The study examines issues beyond that of the initial investigation into the causes of the explosion.
In his first-person testimony, which forms part of the study, Mr Connelly relates how he worked in an annexe at the plant that was filled with toxic chemical fumes, with the air vents blocked by managers because they let out heat, and where the workers had no adequate protective equipment. One piece of machinery regularly gave off electric shocks, and there were many accidents at the plant.
He says: “To start with I phoned the HSE hoping to get advice but I never got any.
“This was around the middle of 2002. I don’t know how many times I phoned them. Laurence Junior [his son, who also worked at the plant] was phoning as well, so between us maybe two dozen calls. This went on for months. We just wouldn’t let go and eventually we did, in my opinion, shame them into coming in.”
As the result of HSE action, the managers of the plant ordered a fumes cupboard to be built to protect workers, says Mr Connelly. But an HSE inspector identified him as having complained to them. “In front of the MD and a manager she says ’you’re the one who phoned’. She gave me her card and said that if there’s any more problems in future just to give her a ring. I was gobsmacked. I had been identified.”
Mr Connelly found from then on that he was criticised by managers for small problems that were not his fault and was denied annual leave when he wanted it.
He later found out through his MP, Anne McKechin, who had written to the HSE on his behalf, that the HSE had served an improvement notice on the plant.
“But if there were any changes they were very minor. Did these people actually know what they were looking for? They were in our department for two minutes, that’s all. To my knowledge the HSE never did an investigation of air quality, they never used a meter or monitored the air quality, but that was once of the things I asked them.
“I contacted the HSE again and said, ’why won’t anybody tell me was it safe, was it not safe? I can’t remember them sending me any letters or giving me explanations. I wanted to know about the chemicals.
“At one time somebody said the proper things were in place or something along those lines.” But he pointed out that the regulations called for safety equipment such as liquid-proof gloves, which were not provided at the plant. “I said, there’s no way that any of that was in use the date that you came in so how can you say that the proper practices are in place?”
Between April 2004, when he stopped working at the plant, and May 11, when the explosion occurred, “I contacted the HSE because I was just livid with them and wanted answers. I contacted them and [got] nothing.
“All the years I was there, right up to about six months before I left, a fan pumped fumes out of one part of the building into another. The windows were actually sealed when these fumes were pumped. There was no ventilation, you couldn’t open the windows.”
Mr Connelly suffered impaired breathing and pains in his back, which he still has today. His son also fell ill while working at the plant.
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